Something Real
by TheoreticallyEva
Summary: A reflection on Zidane going from unknowingly but contentedly living in pretense to embracing a new reality.


When one is practically raised in a thieving theater troupe, a certain attitude toward reality tends to mold one's world view. All things become tinged with a sense of parody or untruth. After all, half of one's time is taken up by trying to convince an audience that something that never happened at all is happening before them at that very moment, and the other half of one's time is spent pretending that it's justifiable to take someone else's things for one's own. After all, the world is a stage, and possessions are merely the props. Attempting to convey a true understanding of reality to such a person becomes similar to describing the taste of salt to someone who has never tried it; that is, that which has never been experienced cannot be comprehended, nor can it be missed. Falsehood becomes a way of life for the pilfering actor, and hence his reality—his truth. For the lost Genome named Zidane, it was no different. In fact, as someone with no real memory of a life before Tantalus, his concept of reality was possibly more compromised than that of his friends in the troupe.

Considered the most suave and dashing of the troupe members, Zidane was often picked to play romantic leads in the plays that they performed. From watching the interactions of lovers in the towns they visited, he caught on quickly how to best portray the passion and desperation that the audiences came to eat up. It was an art that he mastered. He knew where to stand and how high to lift his chin so that the sunlight (or stage lights) produced the best shimmers in his corn-colored hair as he professed his character's fierce devotion toward his partner, shoulders back and fists held slightly away from his thighs, like a man prepared to fight for the fulfillment of his desires. On the outside, every inch of him was the hero with a single-minded determination to live only for love; on the inside, he was merely amused by the wide-eyed sentiment and rapt attention on every face that gazed upon him, filled with belief that he meant every word that someone else had written.

He was discussing this with Blank one night after a particularly successful show. Using one hand to drink from a pint and the other to twirl an ornate fan around his finger, Zidane laughed when Blank warned him against flashing around the fruits of his thievery. After gulping down his beer and exhaling the burn, the Genome shrugged nonchalantly, set the fan on the table, and said, "You know I could just charm my way out of it if somebody claimed it wasn't mine. I can always make up some story about how my one true love gave it to me, and they'd be too distracted by the story to wonder if it was a lie."

Blank smirked and shook his head. "Maybe the person you stole it from _did_ get it from their one true love. How would you feel then?"

"Ah, they'd get over it," Zidane replied with a wave of his hand. Then he spread the fan open between them to study it closely. "It will definitely command a decent price, if Baku doesn't decide to keep it as a prop."

But Blank wasn't deterred from the previous subject. "Have you no sense of sentimentality?" he queried with half a chuckle. "That fan could be the symbol of a romantic relationship, and you think they'd just get over it?"

Zidane blinked. "What's the big deal? It's just a fan. It's not like they would need it to keep living out their 'happily ever after' or whatever."

"That's not the point," Blank insisted. He opened his mouth, then paused, seeming to change his words at the last second. "Wait a minute. You've never been in love before, right?"

"Uh," Zidane took a moment to think—but only a moment. "Nope."

"You've _never_ had a serious relationship," Blank stated rather than asked.

"Nothing that lasted longer than a kiss under the moonlight," Zidane affirmed, then grinned. "Now there's poetry for you. All these plays are rubbing off on me."

With an exasperated sigh, Blank responded, "Well, you're in for it someday. Everything will change once it happens to you."

" _If_ it happens," Zidane corrected.

"You play romantic leads so well," Blank continued as though Zidane had not spoken, "and yet you have no idea how they would actually feel. How do you do it?"

Furrowing his brows, Zidane evaded the question by asking one of his own. "Hold on, you're talking as if you know. When have _you_ ever been in love?"

Pink tinged Blank's cheeks, and Zidane raised his eyebrows when he noticed the way his friend glanced quickly toward Ruby as he leaned back and stretched casually; she was conversing with some young starry-eyed wannabe actresses in the middle of the pub, just a few feet away. "I've had some moments."

At the time, Zidane soon dismissed the notion, and the two actors turned their conversation to other topics.

It wasn't long after that, though, that Tantalus was tasked with kidnapping the princess of Alexandria. And, well… What a chain of events _that_ set off.

Somewhere in the midst of it all, the young woman who had nicknamed herself after his weapon became more important to him than anything. So important, in fact, that as he regained consciousness under the roots of the Lifa Tree, Kuja's breathless body beside him, he soothed his panic by turning his mind to thoughts of her eyes, her smile, her hands, her movements—and finally, her voice. That was when the song came to his mind. As he squinted in the minimal light to find some kind of opening, the first line drifted through his mind— _Alone for a while, I've been searching through the dark…_

Heart pounding, he softly sang the next line—"For traces of the love you left inside my lonely heart."

With that, he found a tendril just small and weak enough for him to kick off. From there, he could squeeze between the rock face and root, slipping safely to the ground.

He sang the rest of the song several times through as he navigated the maze of roots to the outside world. Even then, knowing his feelings for the one who'd taught it to him, he was surprised by the strength it gave him to sing it while imagining her sweet face. It wasn't a fan, and not a physical object at all, so it couldn't be stolen from him—not even by the Lifa Tree. He smiled to himself as he remembered that night over pints with Blank, when the idea that love could really hold so much power over a person and be represented by a single possession seemed like something that could only be found in a play-something not real. Perhaps when he was settled back in civilization, he would find the owner of that fan to return it.

It took a long time for him to emerge from the tangled tree, although he had lost track of the precise number of days. In fact, he might have been stuck out there for much longer if Mikoto had not spotted him in the distance one day and sent up flares to help him know which direction to go. Several months passed as he journeyed across the continent on his own, refraining from sending any letters to let his friends know that he was alive. His head said that he should, but his heart pulled back. Why? The only way he could explain was that trekking completely alone allowed him the time he needed to continue processing everything that had happened and contemplate the best way to move forward. There were no more plays and theaters inside which he could hide, no friends and adventures to distract him, and no more desire to take from others what he didn't have himself. Through his adventures, he had discovered himself to be a lost vessel from a different world, nearly a destroyer of this one-a man whose original purpose had gone unfulfilled because his identity had been formed by people who played convincing games of pretend for a living. Who would he be now? Who _could_ he be?

In that time, he faced his reality; he felt the true self he'd never known was within him settle into his heart a little deeper each day. He kept making his way slowly toward Alexandria, often thinking of their song at the part where it mused, "In my dearest memories, I see you reaching up to me. Now you're gone, but I still believe that you can call out my name." It kept him going in the direction that he knew would bring him close enough to truly hear her call him again.

But he came upon Tantalus first. The exhaustion of months of travel caught up to him the moment he knew he could rest among friends. They were shocked and delighted to see him, of course, and they had many questions for him. His answers were quick and simple because, honestly, all he wanted was to arrange one last play. But this time, it would not just be acting.

So it was that Zidane found himself peering furtively around the backstage curtains at the queen sitting in the balcony, her eyes closed, her face unsmiling. She had chosen to grow out her hair again, and now she looked almost exactly the way that she did when they first met. Their song brushed his mind again— _In your dearest memories, do you remember loving me?_

Well, did she?

His eyes never left her until he walked onto the stage, hidden beneath a heavy cloak that seemed to him like it held the weight of all the pretending of his past. The lines meant something different to him now. He delivered them with a softness and sincerity that his former self would have shouted boastfully and confidently like the hero he wasn't.

It was Ruby in his arms, but the queen in his mind as he asked, throat tight, "Princess, wilt thou be happy, married to a lowly peasant such as I?"

"Prithee, call me princess no more!" Ruby's character responded. But he thought of the woman on the balcony and smiled.

Then, later, he begged gently, "Cast away thy trappings of royalty, and I shall swaddle thee in a gown of pure love!"

And then—"Never again will I part from thee!" he promised her, knowing that on the balcony, she listened without understanding.

Because he meant it, he pleaded, "Pray, my love, make me thy canary to keep forever in the cage of thy bosom!"

And now the lament: "Will we not spread our wings, as yonder birds in joyous flight?" He turned toward the night sky as the words flowed from him, because he wasn't saying them to the audience this time—he was saying them to her, and to anyone who could let him have her. "I beseech thee, wondrous moonlight, grant me my only wish!"

Here was the moment. This was the moment when everything would really change, just like Blank said.

Off he whipped the cloak while pivoting to face her, exclaiming the words that had laced his thoughts in every step that he had taken toward Alexandria—

"Bring my beloved Dagger to me!"

Seconds passed as she stood and stared. Ironically, her eyes asked the same question he had been asking himself ever since leaving the Lifa Tree: _Can you truly be real?_

Before he could answer, she ran.

He waited. Minutes. In those minutes, his hands trembled, and his heart raced. No more pretending. This stage, the costumes, using someone else's words, taking someone else's things—all this was a piece of himself that he was giving up forever. After months of knowing that it was what he needed to do, he found himself questioning whether he could really do it.

But he heard her in the distance; she was already pushing through the crowd. His legs moved in her direction, his whole being drawn to hers. Again, in a moment of panic, the words of the play flashed through his mind— _Princess, wilt thou be happy, married to a lowly peasant such as I?_

And then he watched her throw aside her circlet as the answer came to him: _Prithee, call me princess no more!_

As she leaped into his outstretched arms, the strains of their song swelled in his heart— _Now I know we'll carry on. Melodies of life come circle 'round and grow deep in our hearts..._

Then he smiled at the face that had filled his dreams and urged him onward over the past months, and the song concluded— _as long as we remember._

He felt her pounding his chest, then her cheek pressed against his neck, and her soft hair under one hand, her back under the other. This was no play. It was no dream, either. She was more than a memory urging him forward, more than a song. She was there in reality. His reality.

Yes. No more acting. No more pretending. No more falsehood.

Not while he had something real.


End file.
